In today's society, there is frequently a need for users to collaborate in the production of their work. In the past, such collaboration was done using mechanisms such as meetings, the telephone and email. More recently instant messaging applications have proved to be another useful means by which collaboration can take place.
Such mechanisms however still require coordination of various users' suggestions and integration of accepted suggestions into an original design, document, presentation etc.
One option is to share the document with multiple users (e.g. via email or a shared repository such as that made available via Lotus Notes) and to use a facility such as “track changes” in Microsoft Word. Such collaborative working however involves each user loading the entire contents of the document on their machine and editing it in a suitable editor that has to be installed on the user's computer. For example Word documents are edited using Microsoft Word.
In addition to the examples given above, a number of companies facilitate the whole process with specially designed collaborative editing software.
For example, the MoonEdit program permits multiple editors to work on a document simultaneously, with each editor being assigned a different colour.
Microsoft® also provides Server Extensions for its Office suite which provide collaborative functionality. Users can publish their documents via the web and use inline discussions to discuss ideas within the context of a document itself. This is discussed by the Xhost company as part of their Microsoft Office FAQs.
Conferral also provide collaborative editing software. According to their press release, a document owner invites participants to join in the review process. Such software can be integrated on the inviter side within Microsoft Office. Having accepted the invitation, an invitee is provided with a secure connection back to the inviter's PC. Conferral advertise this software as needing no special editing software at the invitee end—all that is required is a web browser and Java™ functionality. (Java and all Java-based trademarks and logos are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States, other countries, or both.)
Such screen sharing software however tends to be relatively heavy weight. The user needs to remain connected to the inviter's PC and to receive frequent screen updates reflecting the entire document as users make concurrent edits. Such processing is network intensive. There is also a security risk incurred by sharing one's screen with another user—such software provides the other user with machine access.